This was such an intriguing book. It starts off with a girl, Rose, who falls down a hole while out cycling her bike but then lands on what looks like a giant hand made out of some unknown material.
The story then continues some 20 odd years later with Rose as an adult and lead scientist on a project to look into the hand in more detail. We also get some more POV’s (kind of): Kara, a US navy pilot; Ryan, Kara’s co-pilot: Vincent, a linguistics genius; and an unnamed interviewer.
What makes this such a strange book is the format of it. The whole book is in the form of interview transcripts, diary entries, media reports etc. It makes it a very quick read but it has its downside in that it is difficult to form any emotional bond with the characters.
I don’t want to go into more plot details for fear of spoilers but it goes into some interesting areas, including political and societal repercussions. I think the book could have been a solid 5 stars if there had been some normal prose interspersed in all the interview transcripts. The format while initially interesting, got a little annoying towards the end, I just couldn’t feel for the characters. The characters themselves were a little cliche at the beginning as well but things did take a few interesting directions which was nice. The unnamed interviewer was probably my favorite, we still don’t know much about him but he is very interesting.
I felt it could have been a really exceptional book with some format changes but still is very solid. I will definitely be reading the sequel at some stage.
4 stars out of 5
Barry's Bloody Books 